Astro: Because the Future of Email is Artificial Intelligence

With Astro, your email doesn't have to be as difficult a chore. The provides a pleasant user interface, with dialogs that move along like text message conversations. The app is much more than that, though.

Astro features artificial intelligence, powering everything from reading your email to decluttering your inbox. You can have Astro summarize your email for you, powered strictly by voice commands. Reply, delete, archive, or snooze your messages without lifting a finger.

If you've ever used voice dictation on your iPhone, you'll be right at home with Astro. Your virtual email assistant understands natural language, but you will have to speak aloud punctuation marks when you're composing a message.

The drawbacks here are that Astro doesn't always understand your commands. Think Siri, but less powerful. Mistakes can be made.

Also, there's no way to launch a new email using voice commands. You can reply to one that Astro has just read to you, but you're not able to start from scratch using your voice.

Finally, Astro only works with Gmail and Office 265 email accounts at this time. There's no iCloud support, and no way of adding POP3 or IMAP accounts. Astro does, however, fully support Gmail's two-factor authentication.

From the moment you first open Astro, the interface should feel familiar to you. Setting up your email account and settings is done through a dialog that looks and behaves like a text message conversation. Astro whisks you through the setup process, and offers to help declutter your inbox.

The AI behind Astro is able to recognize subscriptions, and offer you the opportunity to unsubscribe from them. It seems to only do them one at a time, though, so you may have to run Astro's "Zap" command multiple times.

The feature also helps you establish some VIP email contacts, whose messages will display in a special location. This isn't quite perfected, either, but it does work surprisingly well. It identifies people you email with frequently as those worthy of being VIP accounts. Later, you can add more through typing.

You're also able to tell Astro to archive old messages, putting emails that are older than 30 days away from your inbox.

If you're looking for a futuristic way of handling your email, that's definitely what Astro is all about. The features are quite good, and you'll find that email isn't as onerous a chore as it once was.